Spike Lee's grotesquely macho-sentimental paean to post 9/11 New York City is tagged to the story of Monty - a goateed Edward Norton - spending his last 24 hours in the Big Apple before going to prison for drug-dealing. Why exactly Monty is allowed out when he's such an obvious flight-risk is never explained. (Did they give him bail? Who paid it?)

He bids farewell to his dad James (Brian Cox), girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson) and two old buddies from the posh school he was once kicked out of: Francis (Barry Pepper) is a Wall Street shark and Philip Seymour Hoffman faxes in his sweaty, nerdish performance as Jacob, a screwed-up teacher perving on his sexy 16-year-old student Mary (Anna Paquin).

Lee's ostentatious setpiece is Norton's howl of non-PC rage lacerating all of NYC's uptight ethnic groups, including the self-righteous blacks: "Slavery was 137 years ago; get over it!". He goes easy, however, on the Irish-American heroes of the fire service. In any case, whatever impact this speech has is entirely cancelled by the final gooey sequence in which Monty imagines these same various representatives of the gorgeous mosaic supportively bidding him farewell, before the ambiguously fantasised cop-out ending.